There have long been calls for Penn State’s Board of Trustees to overhaul itself and change its size, makeup and other bylaws. Trustees are taking steps to make that happen, some say by as soon as this summer.

Members of the board’s Governance and Long-Range Planning Committee heard a benchmarking report from the office of governance consultant Holly Gregory, a New York attorney hired in November and charged with navigating the board through structural changes.

Old MainJOE HERMITT, The Patriot-New, 2012

Gregory, as well as colleague Paige Montgomery, presented a lengthy benchmarking report during a special meeting Wednesday that outlined data collected regarding the governance structures of 20 peer institutions similar in size and stature to Penn State. These institutions range from the University of Pittsburgh to the University of Michigan to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Below are some of the key findings from the benchmarking report:

1. Size of the board: According to Gregory and Montgomery’s findings, Penn State’s 32 board members is the same as the average of the 20 peer groups. However, Penn State’s 30 voting members (the governor and university president are not voting members) is more than the average of 26 that the rest have.

2. Secretaries of state agencies: Sitting secretaries of Pennsylvania’s departments of Education, Agriculture and Conservation and Natural Resources hold seats on Penn State’s board, but Gregory found this practice isn’t as common when looking outside Pennsylvania. Only 30 percent of peer institutions in the aggregate group had secretaries of state agencies sitting on the board, and only half of those are voting members. However, all three other state-related schools (Pitt, Temple and Lincoln) have secretaries of state agencies sitting on their boards.

3. Student trustees: While it’s been tradition for the governor to name a Penn State student to the board each year, the rule isn’t written in stone. However, Penn State students are attempting to change that, and the board of trustees is considering amending its bylaws to make room for a permanent student trustee. According to Wednesday’s benchmarking report, 65 percent of the aggregate peer group had a student trustee on the board, and this practice is much more common at public institutions than it is at private ones.

4. Alumni-elected trustees: Penn State’s alumni trustee election wraps up Thursday, when three Penn Staters will win seats on the board. However, this practice isn’t entirely common, according to Gregory’s findings. Just 15 percent of the aggregate peer group of institutions have sitting trustees who are alumni elected by other alumni. Among the 15 public institutions polled, that number drops to 6.7 percent.

After hearing the benchmarking report, trustees broke into private, small groups where they discussed the findings as well as ways to move forward with changing the board’s bylaws so it can ultimately be more efficient. The small groups were charged “in order to maximize participation,” according to Governance committee chair Keith Eckel.

Eckel, a delegate to agricultural societies, said he hopes to bring forth a plan to the full board for governance reform by July. However, he noted that’s an ambitious timeline, and said recommendations may need to wait until September.

“The key question that we need to ask ourselves as we consider all suggestions is,” Eckel said, “’is this best for the governance of Penn State university?”

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